Toodles
by Dr.Funke
Summary: You and me alone in Modern Classics, are we in one of your fantasies Gilmore?"
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: Me? Oh yeah, I own Warner Brothers. And Gilmore Girls, I was responsible for the whole Cat's in the Cradle\Jess-finds-his-father California plotline and near spin-off. You're welcome. (Psyche)

**Rating**: M for language

**Sub Rating**: R for Random, another R for Rant-y and a liberal TC for Time Consuming. (Note: The copious Hitler references are in no way meant to offend and are most likely a nasty _Inglorious Bastards_ side effect.)

**Summary**: "You and me alone in the Modern Classics, are we in one you're fantasies Gilmore?"

**A\N**: There was a most curious urge for this fandom which I'd never felt before, but-like the orders of a serf dictated by some cruel, unweilding master-had to be indulged.

It was supposed to be a one-shot but it got so rambly I had to cut it into pieces. Then for some reason I put those pieces in reverse order starting with the end. So it's kind of a _Memento_ thing, where the farther you read the more it starts to resemble sense…kind of.

Apologies in advance for any OCC-ness, as well as the beyond freakish length and detail.

Read on home brave homeslice!


	2. PS

_Finito_

**P.S**:

His brain is disintegrating.

A solar eclipse. He can actually_ feel_ her brain working, gears moving, numbers being crunched, then the cogs slowly breaking down, the workers getting confused, taking an early lunch. Then the silent alarm, the office manager ushering everyone back into their cubicles, running them through the emergency drill, instructing them to take their safety fetal positions under their desks and shield their heads 'cause this one's gonna be a mother. _Terror alert red people, let's go!_

He tastes the word that's halfway out of her mouth, feels the clotted web of unspoken things blueprinted on her tongue. He is submerged in water and crushed in heat and at the center a sweet, foreign tartness. A dark, dizzying combustible thing softly blotting out his consciousness in a warm, irretrievably soft concussion. He moves urgently, pressing reverently as though in ritual, fervently trying to inscribe his message on the flaming mountainsides of her mouth, over and over and over again.

_I surrender I surrender I surrender I surrender I surrender I surrender_

He collapses in his chair. Mouth burning. Beyond breathing. Sweet savage, fresh, trembling, new, everything. Watching the swatches of Cerulean. Watching to see if she understands.

The clock ticks. Faulkner stares.

In the margins of her European History notes, there's a little doodle of a kid with crazy hair holding a book in his hand, leaning against the red line, smiling like he doesn't care at all.


	3. I

I.

That roaring thing that sounds like a train?

That's no locomotive; it's the insipid, insane invisible beat of Stars Hollow calling him on a level he's pretty sure only dogs can hear. Drawing him further into a dark, crazy, idiotic death trap from which there is no plausible escape.

It's been on him the minute he gets of the goddamned bus from New York, a nutty, savage, drink-the-Kool-Aid, one-of-us, yowl to submit his soul to this god forsaken place. _Become_ it whispers in a melody similar to that of Jack yelling "Kill the pig, spill its blood!" He should stop fighting, submit to the madness, finally admit that this walking freak fest has won. Turn in his I.D. badge and his hair gel, sit down and knock back a hot, steaming glass of defeat. It's been hounding him for so long, haunting him really, this stupid place. How can you be haunted by something you haven't left? It'll be here forever, bits and pieces lodged in his psyche like the ONE song you always have stuck in your head with five or six lyrics missing because of your goddamned, Uncle Luke-inspired early Alzheimer's.

It'll always be here, pressing against his nerves like a hot poker; festivals and lawn gnomes and giant pizzas and stupid Taylor, rickety diner stairs and Lurch the Lap Dog, bridges and buses and pray-for-death Town Hall Meetings, baseball caps, home deliveries, abandoned boats, Patty the Perv, movies in barns, _Dumbo_ and porn and everything closing at ten, the hobo with the guitar and the harmonica who won't shut the hell up, Kirk and his goddamned tuna on rye, overprotective moms in_ Bangles_ t-shirts ready to extract his eyeballs, Uncles willing to have him castrated for the safety of the neighborhood, band geeks and happy chefs and produce guys and sad French dudes who sound like misanthropic Madeline's.

All saying "Fuck you Mariano we're filled to capacity with all the whack jobs that can legally live in the same place, go play _Rebel Without a Cause_ in Hartford!"

But it's just anger, fury and hurt that he won't play along, play nice, just accept. Stay for dinner instead of climbing out the window and inviting the youngest in the house to come along. He can't believe he knows that, can pick up on it. All the Wild Child, Bad Seed devil incarnate stuff is just wounded pride. Because instead of taking all the fruit baskets and food offers and beyond sincere, brain-cells-sold-separately_ Pleasantville_ hospitality they gift wrap for him three minutes off the bus from New York, he meets their outstretched hands with the taser shock of indifference.

Non-committal hands shoved in pockets.

Mockery-flavored observations.

Monosyllables.

And because he doesn't play ball, Taylor treats him like Kevin Bacon in _Footloose_, the whole town follows suit and he is the Great Satan of the Eastern Hamlet.

It's really just_, Hey buddy, you didn't take our fruit baskets, you are sooooo screwed. You comfy there? 'Cause you'll be paying for this the rest of your natural life. With interest!_

A bunch of whiny, insane _Our Town_ rejects throwing a tantrum because he harshed their _Good Vibrations_ mellow.

The worst part? A tiny, microscopic, (so microscopic it's greatly rumored not to even exist) part of him he doesn't even really thinks _belongs_ to him (maybe it's a stray article off some other whiny loser who lives in a small town that hates his guts) is…_affected_ by it.

Him. The kid who tames New York at age six. The firm believer of whichever politician's running on the Who Gives a Shit platform. Who only_ allows_ himself to be affected, who has excellent, careful control over his emotions. Who long ago, makes Circumstance his needy, helpful bitch:

Circumstance: Can I get you another Evian, Mr. Mariano?

In a way so small it can't be described, so insignificant it can't be expressed in speech this, this hollow of abominations affects him.

Weirdly.

Indefinably.

He never thinks about it. Doesn't acknowledge. Just leaves it sitting alone in the dark because it's too unfathomable. It doesn't compute. (Doctors are still searching for the cause but no clues have been found so far.)

But this can all go away, the crazy, charging undercurrent thing-the heart beat of Stars Hollow that he can feel like Dorian felt his portrait aging underneath its curtain, tells him. The frustration, the anger, the inarticulate…whatever the hell, it can melt away. Like that. (*_snaps fingers_*) All he has to do is submit. All he has to do is give in.

Finally.

Absolutely.

No big.

So he does.

The reading room is tomb silent as he settles himself on his side of the table and gives an approving nod to the doodle scratched into the margins of her paper.

She's looking at him blankly, like he's just eaten a puppy or ruined the end of _Huck Finn_ or ripped out the pages of _Moby Dick_ right in front of her. Her hair cradles her cheeks under the soft sheen of warm light. Cuffs of her fuzzy blue sweater wrapped firmly around her knuckles. Her cheeks are patched in Renoir scarlet, drops of heat against her skin, mouth open, an illustrious cave reflecting the slight glimmer of her lower lip.

She stares. The clock strikes eight.

He smirks.


	4. II

II.

She has to be stopped.

"-Then in 1939, the Nazis occupied Poland, declaring it a state of Nazi Germany and daring the French and British armies to challenge its ever-growing authority on the European Continent…Jess? Hello?"

Saturdays exist for pissing off Luke, avoiding labor and sticking his head out of the downstairs bathroom window breaking in a copy of _Dr. Sax_ over a new pack of unfiltered Marlboro Lights. This? This is a gateway drug. First, he's silently condoning crack of dawn School House Rocks reenactments, next thing you know they're combing each others hair and sharing a malted shake and he's carrying her books while riding a twin bike to the Saturday night sock hop.

And then, _then _he's Lurch.

"Look, if you learned by absorption slamming your head against the book would be really helpful but as it is I think it's just giving you brain damage…which you really can't afford right now."

If he lets it slide she's gonna think this behavior is completely acceptable. Like if she calls him up on some random Thursday night, he'll be right over with Boggle, and Scattergories and _Sophie's Choice_. They'll be BFFs. Eating hot dogs, playing Twister, going to the mall in Hartford to try on earrings and look at boys. Reading _Cosmo_ quizzes over iced lattes, singing along to the _GoGos_ on day trips to Gramma's house with Lorelai Sr. doing William Shatner impressions at the wheel. His Friday nights will consist of: "Hey Jess, could you pass the cucumber-almond face cream?" "Sure thing Ror!" Awesome!

"Okay, fine I know you don't care about European History, but this stuff is really interesting and if you'd at least _pretend_ to pay attention it might be kind of fun-"

Hell.

No.

"…I mean, Nazis aren't fun, obviously. They killed people, like _lots_ of-"

The portrait of Faulkner's staring at him. Judging him. Silently. The windows are sealed, the doors are locked, every thing smells like sharpened pencils. He glances down at the vending machine cookies and Goldfish crackers strewn across the massacre of flowcharts and story webs lining the table like plague victims, and snorts. Like Macadamia nuts are going to make him forget that this is basically a hostage situation. What he's suddenly gonna get Stockholm's Syndrome and be totally okay with being trapped in an eight-by-ten room and read the history of the Western Hemisphere against his will?

"-Fun's not the right word. Hitler? Not a role model, yeah okay buddy your paintings sucked how about getting a new hobby… or there's always medical treatment. Maladjusted sociopath: party of one-"

What's next Chinese water torture? Are they gonna act out _Apocalypse Now_? (She'll make a great Kurtz, just terrific.)

"-Made the Communists look like Salvation Army workers. Stalin was a _kitten_ compared to Hitler, a little tabby kitten who wanted to destroy the Russian aristocracy."

It's official. She is completely incapable of shutting up. For like, a _second_. What is she gonna die if she stops talking? Does she have a disease? Is this a low-budget, straight-to-video, way less climatic _Speed_ sequel: he's Keanu Reeves, she's Sandra Bullock and instead of a bombed out bus the world's gonna explode if she inhales?

"Jess."

She should see a therapist. Or a hypnotist. Get that family friendly Turrets surgically removed.

"_Jess_."

What the hell _is_ David Copperfield doing now?

"Jess!"

Its not impudence (honest) it's his face. The default setting just happens to be the expression of a smug jackass.

"You have no idea what I just said do you?" She props her chin against her hand.

A dazed sense of day old mania gives him no choice but to raise his eyebrows.

"Oh God you're wearing the Magoo face! She cries, you weren't listening to any of that, I just chopped the entire history of the Second World War into tiny, delectable morsels that would make Spark Notes weep and you're sleeping with your eyes open!"

He registers dimly that this is some sort of sore point then remembers he's being unlawfully detained.

(The eyebrows go higher.)

"I stayed up all night making you worksheets and puzzles and a limited edition, Jess-friendly study guide! Did you not see the chart with the Beats on it?"

Christ its angry noble filibuster time. Like _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_ if Jimmy Stewart were female, a perfectionist and invading his personal space. Jess blinks and feels on an intuitive level the reference to the elder Lorelai right about-

"-I could've been helping my mom organize the take-out drawer, which she begged me to do through the door of my room, finally resorting to screeching many a fine Michael Bolton number till I promised her I'd do it later. I could've been hanging out with Lane or at the movies with Dean or preventing forest fires or doing my _own_ homework-"

His system intakes the Frankenstein bit (curious and curiouser) but he's far too disgusted\intrigued to make the effort of speech.

"-but no, like an idiot, I went to my room and put on some Smiths-because for some reason Morrissey's whining is really relaxing to study too-and sat around thinking of ways to make this stuff not seem like torture to you."

She shouldn't play poker. At least not for money, her whole face is a tell.

"I thought "okay, its Jess, he's really, _really_, smart. He could do anything he wants. He eats books like they're a life source. He hates school. And learning. And practically everything related to school and learning. His teachers just aren't making it interesting enough for him; he needs something else to keep him focused. I don't know, maybe someone would really have to get to know him and shape the curriculum around _him_."

"I made all these graphs and charts and all this alternative stuff because I thought it would get you interested. I know Stars Hollow High is small but the teachers still can't see everyone all the time. I thought you needed individual attention, like if you just had all this stuff that was specially made for you it would make a difference."

She's winding up like a spring. Jess fiddles with a paper clip, a silent movie on the other side of the table.

"I thought I could make it the tiniest bit interesting, I thought I could show you this stuff and it wouldn't be like everything else you choose to ignore just because it's there. She laughs, but it's the what-an-idiot, post revelation laugh. It was getting very _Dead Poet's Society_ back in my room, you were gonna ace this stuff because you actually cared about it, you were gonna graduate and go to college and thank me at your Noble Prize dinner and I could feel like that Friday night back in Stars Hollow a billion years ago hadn't been a complete waste of time."

"But thanks for the reality check. Its dangerous walking around thinking these things aren't just daydream material. I'm glad you stopped me. I thought I was the Miracle Worker last night, like making you a worksheet was freeing Nelson Mandela or overthrowing Napoleon or curing cancer. Thank God that Berlin Wall's already been torn down, or I would've hopped on a plane and tried to kick it down myself. But now, if I ever get the urge to do this again, I'll just wait five minutes then go save the Amazon or reverse global warming or sit the Sunnis and Shiites down for a little peace powwow because I'll know those things as unthinkable as they are at least worth the effort."

She inhales looking livid. Fresh, vibrant, disappointed.

"…And okay, yeah, the Marie Antoinette sock puppet show was kind of lame, but you could've at least put that down on the evaluation sheet…" She sighs like a disillusioned student of prayer.

"Everyone says it wouldn't help you. And I was blamingyour_ teachers_, like its McCullen's fault you hate his class, yeah his facial hair's distracting but take some Ritalin _God_-"

Having had enough of the show, Jess moves his paperclip and presses the volume button in his head. Her voice disappears and he sits back. A million retorts die on his tongue as he dimly accepts the onslaught, something that feels like its happening across the street.

What it's his fault anticipations just premeditated resentment? He never asks for any of this _Good Will Hunting_, life coach shit, _she_ gives it to _him_. And then gets pissed when she doesn't get a thank you note.

He's getting angry just thinking about it. Heating up slowly.

He is most technically, a victim. She's the ransom-er, (she must have demands) though he's not sure the bargaining for freedom option's gonna work out in his favor. Maybe he can distract her with one of the empty coffee cups and burrow under the table. Yeah. Break through the floorboards, fall into the kid's section and break both legs on _The_ _Lorax_ display.

Outstanding.

And, sorry who made her Mother Teresa? Did God pull another Joan of Arc and tell her he really needed some TLC in the form of fractals? _Listen Gilmore, if you can teach Mariano knowledge is power I'll make you CNN's number One Foreign Correspondent_, knocking that bitch Christiane Amanpour right off her pedestal?" Did they pinkie swear on it?

He lets out a low growl.

Look at her. Sitting there, twirling her NO. 2 pencil, swinging her legs over her chair. Yelling at him. Her devoutly scribbled notes on the take over of the Peninsula of Who Gives a Crap most likely surrounded by doodles of unicorns in Harvard sweatshirts in the margins. Meanwhile he's ranting to himself. On the inside. Like a _crazy person_.

Jesus, where's the trademark awkward silence? The pause? Anything?

Jess's features heat with anger. You know, for a supposed book-lover she really doesn't get the whole "mood" element instrumental to a piece of literature. She's more about tone, narrative, author's voice. Blah, blah, blah. He's much more of a mood guy, how a scene feels, how it tastes, the atmosphere of it. It's what turns him on about Burroughs and Ginsberg and even Wolfe the rare occasions he stops whining and grows a pair. Mood makes the piece.

Having the after mentioned affliction, it's perfectly natural for her to completely fail to notice her surroundings (for like, the billionth time). The warm light, the Billy Holiday, the soft hot heat of the room, all circumstantial. The locked door, a tiny room with a tiny table in between them, the sleeve of her sweater brushing against his exposed forearm, all easily bypassed when one is too occupied with tone.

Being a mood man, whenever she goes all Roman Empire on his personal space to eloquently remind him of the shame he brings to the species, he is customarily compelled (completely against his will) to take inventory.

Nothing much has changed, except maybe everything he remembers is a little more intense:

A bright fierceness in her face 'cause she has yet to stop yelling. White teeth, nestled behind her pink lower lip that's jutting out like some glittering rock formation in the Andes, a sandy pink cliff lying suspended in lush desert sunlight and he can feel the heat on the back of his neck.

Her eyes are dark diamonds, the impenetrable blue that's dawn, afternoon and twilight in one, passing like strains of light falling into expanses of newborn darkness in soft overtures.

Hyper speed annoyance, pronouncing words he's glad he can't hear. He's running the paper clip gently across his exposed forearm when he hears the roar. A low, haunting fucking creepy echo that sounds like a distant train. A passing auditory phenomenon at first, then louder, and with it the sudden, startling realization that if he's ever going to get any goddamned peace-and by extension make his Saturday make sense-he's gonna have to DIH. (Do It Himself)

He has her face in his hands before her current sentence is finished careening itself out of her mouth.


	5. III

III.

Every once and a while he experiences a state of calm satisfaction (resignation, never joy) that's like the second cousin twice removed of what most cultures recognize as happiness. Good old Uncle Luke likes to squash this feeling like the spiders he finds in the bathtub, as it turns out Lorelai Jr. prefers to hunt it for sport. (True this happiness mainly comes at the expense of others and has been deemed by more than a few psychologists as a "heavily sadomasochistic enterprise" but Jess still has trouble figuring out why this is considered a con.)

At least she lets it run around a little first.

"Do you want to start with history or biology? Or should we just hit algebra right away? Ooh, I haven't done logarithms in forever!"

"You do know entrapments illegal right?"

"That's weird I can't hear you unless your answers are in variables of x."

Something about the locked door and the sealed windows and the flourish in which she produces the warm peach color-coordinated study schedule out of her binder suggest kindly that there is no escape. He sits across from her half impressed at the pure Colombo of her double cross, half pretty sure he's gonna end up testing the reliance of the Plexiglas in another fifteen minutes. Typical Gilmore oblivion allows her to yammer on endlessly about fractals while completely ignoring the soft lighting, dense air and freakin' Billy Holliday cooing from the speakers in the empty, slightly intimate room she's picked for his academic torture.

Jess's seen this episode and said oblivion will take a sharp, possibly illegal U-turn at the first hint of a pause (she'll inhale eventually) which will be so surprised at its own spontaneous existence it'll evolve with Pokemon speed into a classic, limited-edition. Awkward Silence. Being of the Jess\Rory variety the silence will stubbornly deny its own awkwardness before giving them the finger and storming out of the room yelling "I'm fine!" Platitudes will be exchanged, books referenced, hey Lurch the lap dog might even get a shout out! She'll feel embarrassed in her sanctuary, he'll feel like he's watching a mid-90s teen drama on the WB and Faulkner although already dead, will die a little more inside.

Go Saturday.

It's bad for business, this thing that happens whenever they share the same oxygen. It impedes progress, pisses him off and assassinates their "alleged" …whatever. (Adopt-A-Delinquent Program? Batman\Robin dynamic? Glorified, schizophrenic "-on-my-used-to-resemble-normal-life: friendship on steroids?) It makes her go wallflower like he's got leprosy and he _hates_ it. More than that, he hates that he cares about something not even worth loathing. What's worse? He's acclimating himself to it behind his own back, it doesn't kill him to talk to her, its fun laying verbal traps and smirking when she falls into them, throwing out Mailer references and bestowing one impressed raised eyebrow when they're understood and returned.

The conversational trap doors are usually veiled comments about the live action sanitarium they live at the center of or how spiffy Forest Gump-cum-Frankenstein is looking today or how raising Luke's blood pressures' really a game made for two if she wants in. She falls through them, all the better to set the floor on fire and incinerate his carefully built house of metaphors with one Margaret Thatcher-y speech on humanity and tenderness and crap delivered with a calm, even Girl Scout stare like she's Lincoln at Gettysburg. To which he falls back on raised eyebrows.

And yeah, sometimes when these little one act, mutant public verbal beatings are over, his smirk lasts the length of the diner door slamming in her exit, long enough to be noticed by Flannel Man who comes in bearing waffles. He sees the smirk, pauses, glances from Jess to the door about a billion times then gives him this inscrutable look like he's not sure what he just saw, but he's damn pissed at the waffles for making him miss the beginning. (By the time this look's being administered he's usually on his bed with a copy of _Farewell to Arms_ listening to Joe Strummer scream about London's shaky economy)

Sure he annoys her when he's bored, but who wouldn't? The entertainment value far out weighs the effort put in. Yes he makes her uncomfortable with his proximity issues _and_ occasionally steals her stuff, _and _dedicates spacious amounts of time to imagining euthanizing her significant other

Big deal.

She has severe spatial problems; it's not so much him leaning closer to her in any given situation, as her failing to measure the distance between them correctly. She might need a tape measure. Or glasses.

He's a klepto so what? If it isn't bolted down you must not really care about it, plus he steals _books_ what is the bookmobile gonna run him over?

And 3) Well… "murder", "public service" …the lines are very thin.

And hey it's not like all of this stuff doesn't go both ways. If anything, her stupid, inscrutable, ancient Gilmore wisdom is a negative influence on him. Sprinkler rescues, 1950s basket rituals, going to class, helping Luke, giving a shit about lawn gnomes, delivering Meals on Wheels to a study party of malcontent prep school kids snorting Women's Lib like its crack all for some girl who talks to her coffee and makes fun of his hair gel? What the hell? Survey says this behavior can lead to deep, possibly flannel-colored psychological problems of the Luke Danes variety where you're stomping around a lunatic-filled, all-you-can-eat, nut house snarling at cell phones and worshipping a psycho who loves barnyard clocks but shh, don't tell anyone 'cause it's a secret. Jess'll grab a friend (maybe Kirk) and perform Hara-kiri on the counter during the lunch rush before that happens.

The fact is she's retarding him.

Slowly, like you'd cook a rotisserie chicken, and he wants his fucking disability check.


	6. IV

IV.

He hears it coming like a distant train.

Mariano. In the library, with a paper clip scraping gently across his exposed forearm. The skies are clear, but the forecast calls for clouds, high winds, and low temperatures with a light sprinkling of post-apocalyptic bat shit insane.

Seven am Saturday morning and she has yet to stop talking about the Incans or the Nazis or whatever even though its been two hours and he's pretty sure half his brain cells have committed suicide on the promise of an afterlife filled with virgins.

His fun is dead. ("You and me alone in the Modern Classics, are we in one of you're fantasies Gilmore?") Typical initial banter leading him to believe the appointment is more of a "_Rory and Jess's Excellent Adventure_ scenario where they scour Mayberry for decent literature and convince Kirk to remain indoors because of a deadly airborne narcotic" is an eloquent little sham. It's actually more of a "Let's have coffee and confront your issues with algebra" kind of thing.

Whatever small feelings of semi-elation generated by the five am phone call requesting his presence with three large coffees in the library parking lot (annoyed because of the time, amused that five am Rory still has the fortitude to put her hand over the receiver and disguise her voice like some kid Deep Throat, impressed by the decidedly un-Gilmore-ish way she leaves the house without even posting a note on the fridge) is set in the scope of a sniper rifle when she lures him to the second floor reading room and closes the door.

By the time he sees the antiquated copy of _Math is Magic! _It's already too late.

**A\N: **Um...that about does it.


End file.
